1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image capture apparatus and method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publications No. 2005-354166, No. 2004-219765 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 7,295,232B2), No. 2006-86933 (corresponding to US 2006062433A1), and No. 2006-174069 (corresponding to US 2006127084A1) are examples of related art.
A long-time exposure technique is common as a photographic or image capture technique. In this technique, exposure is continuously performed for a certain period of time such as several seconds to several tens of seconds or even over several tens of minutes.
The long-time exposure technique is also used to provide photographic representations as well as to adjust the brightness of a subject.
For example, night scenes are captured with a long exposure time. Since the amount of light is low, the exposure time is increased to collect a sufficient amount of light to obtain shots of night scenes.
The long-time exposure technique may also be used for other purposes. For example, the aperture is intentionally set low or the image capture sensitivity is reduced to represent the motion of a subject or focus on a stationary object among moving objects.
Image capture techniques such as using a flash (flashlight device) during long-time exposure to achieve various effects such as first-curtain synchronization, second-curtain synchronization, and multi-flash are also common.